McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center Gets 50 Commemorative Coins

CONCORD, NH — For the first time in 15 months, since the coronavirus pandemic, the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord was opened to the general public on Thursday, and employees and others had a lot of things to celebrate.

The first was a new Mars exhibit which was unveiled. Another was items from the Mount Washington Observatory’s Weather Discovery Center which closed in North Conway in January and are now being housed at the center. The third was the post-pandemic reopening. And the fourth was a donation of 50 new Christa McAuliffe Commemorative Coins to the center by inventor Dean Kamen.

U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen was on-hand to cut the ribbon for the news Mars exhibit and informed attendees that she was now the chairwoman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies, which handles NASA’s funding. She said exploring space was important to all of the work being done on Earth and called it “fun” and “fascinating” to see everything going on at the program including its work on Mars.

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Shaheen and Kamen spoke, too, about how the Christa coin came to be. It not only honors the former Concord High School teacher, who was the first teacher in space but also raises money for FIRST Robotics to promote Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education.

“Dean came to me, I don’t know, a couple of years ago, and said, ‘I have this great idea’,” Shaheen said. “If you know Dean, you know, that he has a lot of great ideas and he is very successful at making those ideas happen.”

There was some speculation as to whether or not, in divided Washington, D.C., a coin proposal for Christa would be approved, Kamen said, to laughter. But the bipartisan proposal was easily approved and signed into law by President Donald Trump.

Kamen thanked Shaheen for her work getting the coin done and other causes as well as the humble nature by which she works. He said everyone thought it was a waste of time to create a coin for Christa, which he took as a challenge because the country needed something to be positive about at the time.

Kamen offered a box of 50 coins for the discovery center as a donation and suggested everyone should buy them, through the center, to help support not only FIRST Robotics but the center, too. He is also trying to arrange coins to be given to Mark Bezos to take into space aboard Blue Origin flight scheduled in about three weeks.

Kamen, as well, said it was a very good investment, depending on the silver market in the future. It was also the first time, he said, a teacher or an organization was featured on a coin minted in the United States.

But more importantly, Kamen said, was what the coin symbolized — a great teacher who cared about education, kids, and the future, someone “that all kids should aspire to be, as far as commitment,” a great robotics program and center, and all of it coming from New Hampshire.

“This coin should be part of every school,” he said. “I can’t imagine there is a school in this state that the kids can’t organize, to give some special teacher, a coin. Most of all, I think, besides being a beautiful coin, it should be a symbol that makes New Hampshire recognized, internally and by the rest of the country, as a very special place, that’s taking the lead in very special programs.”

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